


you've done fine

by Fxckxxp



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, Ice Cream, M/M, POV Niccolò Fares, Post-Canon, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:19:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fxckxxp/pseuds/Fxckxxp
Summary: Gelato after therapy is not just a routine, it’s a ritual.





	you've done fine

“Gelato?”

Marti says it before he looks up at Nico — attention on his phone, swiping it locked and then pocketing it. Big brown eyes, freckles on his rising cheeks, one of those smiles that breaks his lips open so Nico can see the tops of his teeth. Genuine. He says it like this isn’t the seventh Thursday in a row at exactly 17:56 they’ve gotten gelato. He says it like he’s always still making sure.

Nico can’t help but be charmed by his mindfulness. It never falters. He smiles crooked and shrugs his shoulders, turning on his heel and answering Marti over his shoulder. “Of course. Let me sign out first.”

He walks from the middle of the waiting room, where Marti has been hanging back to pick him up for probably the last ten minutes, to the wrap-around desk by the office front door. The receptionist slides him the clipboard, and he signs his name by his appointment end time right next to the same signature he made an hour ago to check in.

“Thanks, Nico.” She smiles at him, her voice high and bright. She’s newer — or maybe the schedules have changed. Either way, like with all fresh faces Nico tends to see on a reoccurring basis without so much as a name, there’s a little story for her in his head.

_A newlywed. She cooks terribly but bakes wonderfully. She never buys a ticket for the tram yet also has never been caught._

Nico’s always done this — make up stories for people.

(He did it when he first saw Marti, too — book smart; pretentious; a lightweight; sleeps in past noon — but then none of those things turned out to be true and Marti became more than just a story in Nico’s head.)

He actually brought it up at therapy today, the nagging of why he does this weighing on his conscious. To which he got a swift reply:

_“Niccolò. Do you think you’re the only person in the world who people-watches?”_

(To be fair, sometimes Nico feels as if he’s the only person in the world to say and do and feel a lot of things.)

Marti never asks how it goes, never asks what they talk about. (A stark difference to all of the questions he usually asks every other day: never shy to ask Nico how he’s feeling, never shy to ask how he can make things better. But here, maybe it’s a privacy thing. A respect thing.) He’s just always sitting in the waiting room, right before 18:00 in the evening every single Thursday to walk Niccolò home.

Today was an alright day. Nico feels neither good nor bad, just drained. And he at least tells Marti that.

Marti pulls him right instead of left after they’ve descended the stairs on their way out of the building. 

“Where are we going?” Nico asks.

Marti bites his lip. There’s something sparkly in his eye when he looks at Nico from his peripherals and his mouth curls into a cute, squiggly smile. “To wait in line,” he answers after a pause, the words drawn out. Like he’s hiding a surprise.

Nico just shakes his head, tilting it to the side as he follows Marti away from the Tiber, towards the city center. “To wait in line where?”

Marti bumps their shoulders together, giving him a sideways smile. “At the place where they dip your whole cone in chocolate.”

Nico knows this is for him — something nice after something not so nice. But Nico also sees it as a backwards thank you for something Marti always has to dance around: his emotions. The sentiment is sweet, though. Marti’s no rocket scientist, but it doesn’t take one to know that therapy is difficult, taxing, and often demanding of understanding, patience, and empathy for situations Nico doesn’t want to be put in anyway — having empathy for your future self? He feels brain dead after processing that idea for an hour.

And yet, without prodding or ever pushing too far, Marti somehow knows this — wants to make it all better. And if gelato makes it even just one percent better, well, then so be it. Most days, Nico will take that one percent over nothing; he’s never ungrateful for all of the ways Marti tries to be there for him, even if it’s hard sometimes, even if reassuring words and tender kisses and sweet treats only feel like trying to fill a swimming pool with a teacup.

As they wander through the twists of the city center streets, Nico can see the back of Sant'Agnese in Agone, the evening sun making the highlights of the architecture orange — can see the crowd of pedestrians thicken around Piazza Navona a block ahead. 

When they stop in line, he leans on Marti, wanting closeness. It’s tempting to grab his hand, to lay his head on his shoulder, anything. It’s one thing he’s had to get used to with this relationship — although sometimes he doesn’t care about what other people think. Like now. 

Nico tests the waters, hooking his arm with Marti’s, elbows bent together. And Marti doesn’t falter. If anything, Nico feels them both relax.

A colorful woman — yelling and gesticulating — in line a few people ahead of them has an oversized purse slung over her shoulder, and a little dog pokes its head out, eyes wide and ears up and alert. It looks right at Nico, tongue sticking out to the side of its mouth in what looks like a big, panting grin.

Nico smiles back at it.

“Maybe she stole it,” Marti looks over, slightly down at him — he says it under his breath with a playful inflection, eyebrows raised.

“What?” Nico snorts. He stands up straight, meeting Marti’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Marti half-laughs. “Let’s see. It’s her ex-boyfriends. But they used to live together, you know, and the dog likes her more. So while she still has the spare key, she went to his place while he was at work and snatched it.” He’s wearing the same face Nico was trying so hard not to make rambling about hairy Hobbit feet two autumns ago. A.k.a., Marti is the owner of the world’s worst poker face.

“What are you doing?” Nico asks. It’s the first time all day he can feel the smile on his face travel into the rest of his body.

Marti just shrugs, and they step up in line. “I don’t know. Don’t you ever just wonder about people sometimes — especially people with pink hair yelling on the phone, in line for gelato, with tiny dogs in their purse?”

Nico huffs, hanging his head before looking up at Marti with lips turned up. Sometimes, he swears Marti can read his mind. Or something very close to it. “Yeah. All the time.”

Marti smiles back at him, soft and bright. “What flavor do you want?” They’re already up at the counter now.

Nico hides his face in Marti’s shoulder for a second. “Lemon basil. With dark chocolate.”

And Marti just orders it, apparently seven gelato dates in and he’s stopped questioning Nico’s weird tastes. (And Nico holds both cones while Marti pays, taking a bite from each and deciding that yes, lemon basil with dark chocolate is definitely the winner.)

They walk east and find a seat on a stone bench at the edge of Piazza Navona, where the sea of people to daydream about is ever changing and almost endless.

“Let me at least try it,” Marti makes grabby hands for Nico’s gelato, his face already semi-disgusted before even taking a bite, coming to full fruition — scrunched eyebrows, lips tight, eyes wide in horror — when he finally does.

It’s beyond endearing. “Yeah?” Nico shakes his head and swipes it back from him, the smile spreading over his face another one he can feel all the way down to his toes. Only Marti can make him feel like this with just a single expression.

“It’s terrible,” Marti deadpans.

Nico just shoves his gelato into Marti’s chin, the commotion as Marti tries to swat it away effectively causing half of it to end up on the ground.

Nico scrunches his nose, his lips following suit in a smile before he sticks his tongue out at Marti. He sighs, but not in contempt. “Look what you did.”

“Me?” Marti’s voice gets high at the rhetorical question. “Fine. We’ll switch,” he sighs, exchanging their cones, Nico’s pretty much gone by this point.

Giggling so much he can barely eat, Nico watches Marti barely be able to stomach the rest — which, of course, only eggs Marti’s sour face even sourer. At this point, it’s all just for show.

Nico notices a woman observing their flirty disaster a bench over, smiling down into her book again once they meet eyes.

“What do you think people think about us?” Nico tips his chin up, sweet for a second. He watches Marti look over at him, trace his brown eyes over his face as they soften.

And then Marti laughs. “They probably just think we’re idiots.”

**Author's Note:**

> (the specific gelateria i had in mind they went to was [this one](https://www.facebook.com/Frigidarium/), in case anyone was curious!) 
> 
> talk to me on [tumblr!](https://bisexualcaravaggio.tumblr.com/)


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